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Stowe Gardens

Cultural significance

The World Monuments Fund describes Stowe as "one of the most beautiful and complex historic landscapes in Britain". The range and stature of the designers deployed, including Bridgeman, Brown, Vanbrugh, Gibbs and Kent; the intricacy of the architectural and allegorical schemes those designers devised; the unified conception they created; the extent of its survival; and its influence as the "birthplace of the English art of landscape gardening", combine to make Stowe "a garden of international repute". Its importance is recognised in the large number of listed structures within the garden and the wider park, and its own Grade I listing designation.

Architecture and horticulture

The Temples’ wealth and prestige enabled them to engage most of the leading designers of the Georgian period. The outline of the present gardens was laid by Charles Bridgeman, and some of the earliest of the forty monuments and temples situated on the estate were designed by John Vanbrugh. They were followed by William Kent, James Gibbs and then by a youthful Capability Brown, who was appointed head gardener at Stowe at the age of 25, and later married in the estate church. Tim Knox, in his chapter "The Fame of Stowe", published in the Trust's book, Stowe Landscape Gardens, suggests that Brown's subsequent career, which saw him deploy the expertise gained at Stowe across a large number of other landscape parks throughout England, may in fact be the garden's most significant legacy. In addition to the major British architects deployed, the Temples engaged a number of prominent Europeans. Although they worked primarily on the house, they also contributed to some of the garden structures. Giovanni Battista Borra worked on the Temple of Concord and Victory and modernised the Boycott Pavilions and the Oxford Gate. Georges-François Blondel may have undertaken work on the Queen's Temple, while Vincenzo Valdrè designed the Oxford Gate lodges, the base of the Cobham Monument and may have been responsible for the Menagerie.

The work of so many major architects, some of whom came to make improvements and alterations to the house but also contributed to the design and structure of the garden and park, gives the gardens and park at Stowe a particular architectural flavour. It is less a garden of plants and flowers, and more a landscape of lawns, water and trees, with carefully contrived vistas and views which frequently culminate in eye-catcher structures. Other gardens of the period, such as Claremont, Kew and Stourhead followed this style, but few matched the scale of Stowe. While the buildings in the grounds at Stowe are natural foci for attention, the landscaping around the structures is as vital to the overall scheme. The gardens progressed from a formal, structured layout, through increasing naturalisation. The planting of grasses and trees was equally deliberate, designed to lead the eyes of the visitor on to the next area, and to bring a sense of drama to the landscape.

The gardens incorporate a number of architectural and horticultural "firsts". They are themselves considered the earliest example of the English landscape garden. Defining the borders of the park he began, Charles Bridgeman designed the first ha-ha in England, a feature that was widely imitated. Within the garden, Kent's Chinese House was perhaps England's earliest Chinoiserie building. So notable were the gardens at Stowe that they were emulated across the world. Thomas Jefferson visited, and bought the guidebooks, transporting ideas across the Atlantic for his Monticello estate. Eastwards, it inspired gardens in Germany such as that at Wörlitz, and those created at Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo by Catherine the Great.

Sermon in stone - the “meaning” of the garden

A central element of the uniqueness of Stowe were the efforts of its owners to tell a story within, and through, the landscape. A symposium organised by the Courtauld Institute, The Garden at War: Deception, Craft and Reason, suggests that it was not "a garden of flowers or shrubs [but] of ideas." The original concept may have been derived from an essay written by Joseph Addison for the Tatler magazine. The landscape was to be a "sermon in stone", emphasising the perceived Whig triumphs of Reason, the Enlightenment, liberty and the Glorious Revolution, and 'British' virtues of Protestantism, empire, and curbs on absolutist monarchical power. These were to stand in contrast with the debased values of the corrupt political regime then prevailing. The temples of Ancient Virtues and British Worthies were material expressions of what the Temples themselves supported, while the intentionally ruined Temple of Modern Virtue was a contemptuous depiction of what they opposed, the buildings and their setting making a clear moral and political statement. Praising the "grandeur of [its] overall conception", John Julius Norwich considered that the garden at Stowe better expressed the beliefs and values of its creators, the Whig Aristocracy, "than [of] any other house in England."

Art

Charles Bridgeman commissioned 15 engravings of the gardens from Jacques Rigaud (fr), which were published in 1739. The etching was undertaken by another French artist, Bernard Baron. They show views of the gardens with an array of fashionable figures, including the Italian castrato Senesino, disporting themselves in the foreground. One set is held in the Royal Collection. In 1805-9 John Claude Nattes painted 105 wash drawings of both the house and gardens. Stowe is one of the houses and gardens depicted on the frog service, a dinner service for fifty people commissioned from Wedgwood by Catherine the Great for her palace at Tsarskoye Selo. John Piper produced watercolours of some of the monuments in the gardens, including the Temple of British Worthies, amongst others.

The gardens at Stowe were as much influenced by art as they provided an inspiration for it. The idealised pastoral landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin, with their echoes of an earlier Arcadia, led English aristocrats with the necessary means to attempt to recreate the Roman Campagna on their English estates. Kent's acquaintance, Joseph Spence, considered that his Elysian Fields were "a picture translated into a garden".

Poetry

Alexander Pope who first stayed at the house in 1724, celebrated the design of Stowe as part of a tribute to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. The full title of the 1st edition (1731) was An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington, Occasion'd by his Publishing Palladio's Designs of the Baths, Arches, Theatres, &c. of Ancient Rome. Lines 65–70 of the poem run:

Still follow Sense, of ev'ry Art the Soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from Difficulty, strike from Chance;
Nature shall join you, Time shall make it grow
A Work to wonder at—perhaps a STOWE.

— Alexander Pope, An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington, Occasion'd by his Publishing Palladio's Designs of the Baths, Arches, Theatres, &c. of Ancient Rome

In 1730 James Thomson published his poem Autumn, part of his four works The Seasons. Stowe is referenced in lines 1040–46:

Or is this gloom too much? Then lead, ye powers
That o'er the garden and the rural seat
Preside, which shining through the cheerful land
In countless numbers blest Britannia sees,
Oh lead me to the wide-extended walks,
The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!

— James Thomson, Autumn

In 1732 Lord Cobham's nephew Gilbert West wrote a lengthy poem, The Gardens of the Right Honourable Richard Viscount Cobham, a guide to the gardens in verse form. Another poem which included references to Stowe is The Enthusiast; or lover of nature by Joseph Warton.

Historic importance

Stowe has a "more remarkable collection of garden buildings than any other park in [England]". Some forty structures remain in the garden and wider park; Elizabeth Williamson considered that the number of extant structures made Stowe unique. Of these, some 27 separate garden buildings are designated Grade I, Historic England's highest grade, denoting buildings of "exceptional interest". The remainder are listed at Grade II* or Grade II. The garden and surrounding park are themselves listed at Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. In the opening chapter of Stowe House: Saving an Architectural Masterpiece, the most recent study of the house and the estate, Jeremy Musson describes the mansion as "the centrepiece of a landscape garden of international repute", while the National Trust, the garden's custodian, suggests that the estate is "one of the most remarkable legacies of Georgian England". The architectural historian Christopher Hussey declared the garden at Stowe to be the "outstanding monument to English Landscape Gardening".

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21st century

Crit - think it should go at the end of the 21st century History section

Accommodating the requirements of a 21st-century school within a historic landscape continues to create challenges. In the revised Buckinghamshire, in the Pevsner Buildings of England series published in 2003, Elizabeth Williamson wrote of areas of the garden being "disastrously invaded by school buildings." In 2021, plans for a new Design, Technology and Engineering block in Pyramid Wood provoked controversy. The school’s plans were supported by the National Trust but opposed by Buckinghamshire County Council’s own planning advisors, as well as a range of interest groups including The Gardens Trust. Despite objections from the council’s independent advisor, and an appeal to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the plans were approved in 2022.

Additional sources

• Colvin, Howard (1978). A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects: 1600-1840. London: John Murray. OCLC 1337285841.
• John Dixon-Hunt; Peter Willis, eds. (1998). The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820. Cambridge, US: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-58092-2.
• Harris, John (1994). The Palladian Revival: Lord Burlington, His Villa and Garden at Chiswick. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-05983-0.
• Nick Morris, ed. (2018). Stowe House: Saving an Architectural Masterpiece. London: Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-1-785-51111-0.
• Mowl, Timothy; Earnshaw, Brian (1985). Trumpet At A Distant Gate: The Lodge as Prelude to the Country House. London: Waterstone. ISBN 978-0-947-75205-7.
• Norwich, John Julius (1985). The Architecture of Southern England. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-22037-5.
• Taylor, Patrick (2008). Gardens of Britain and Ireland. London: Dorling Kindersley Ltd. ISBN 978-1-405-32854-8.
• Williamson, Elizabeth; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2003) [1960]. Buckinghamshire. The Buildings of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09584-5.